Most of this advice boils down to an argument in favor of basic planning before starting a company or raising money. In many ways the fact that it has become so cheap to start a company and relatively cheap to raise angel/seedmoney that we as an industry have gotten lazy on basic planning. Market Size. Let me be very direct. MORE

March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard ComputerSociety.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start withgood people, to make something customers actually want, and to spendas little money as possible. The way a startup makes money is to offer people bettertechnology than they have now. MORE

November 2005 Venture funding works like gears. typical startup goes throughseveral rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take justenough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the nextgear. The advantage of raising money from friends and family is thattheyre easy to find. This stops with VC-scale money. MORE

This is the first post in what’s going to be a series of blogs on how to go from nothing – no connections, no team, no money and no knowledge of how the startup industry really works – to operating a growing business. If you want to waste nine months trying to raise VC money for that idea, great. need money for the servers. MORE

If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break out into a much bigger company then you should let the founders take money off of the table. It’s that simple. Not FU money, but “feed the family money. Only then are you truly aligned. MORE

Most of this advice boils down to an argument in favor of basic planning before starting a company or raising money. In many ways the fact that it has become so cheap to start a company and relatively cheap to raise angel/seedmoney that we as an industry have gotten lazy on basic planning. Market Size. Let me be very direct.

March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard ComputerSociety.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start withgood people, to make something customers actually want, and to spendas little money as possible. The way a startup makes money is to offer people bettertechnology than they have now.

If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break out into a much bigger company then you should let the founders take money off of the table. It’s that simple. Not FU money, but “feed the family money. Only then are you truly aligned.

November 2005 Venture funding works like gears. typical startup goes throughseveral rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take justenough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the nextgear. The advantage of raising money from friends and family is thattheyre easy to find. This stops with VC-scale money.

This is the first post in what’s going to be a series of blogs on how to go from nothing – no connections, no team, no money and no knowledge of how the startup industry really works – to operating a growing business. If you want to waste nine months trying to raise VC money for that idea, great. need money for the servers.

March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard ComputerSociety.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start withgood people, to make something customers actually want, and to spendas little money as possible. The way a startup makes money is to offer people bettertechnology than they have now.

If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break out into a much bigger company then you should let the founders take money off of the table. It’s that simple. Not FU money, but “feed the family money. Only then are you truly aligned.

November 2005 Venture funding works like gears. typical startup goes throughseveral rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take justenough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the nextgear. The advantage of raising money from friends and family is thattheyre easy to find. This stops with VC-scale money.